Thursday, February 4, 2016

What if you could decline some fouls in the NBA?

OK, I'm only talking about one very specific situation here, and surprisingly it's not the growing "hack-a-whoever" trend of teams fouling bad free-throw shooters on purpose. My guess is that issue is going to work itself out on its own when clubs eventually come to the conclusion that it doesn't actually help.

What I do think, however, is that the NBA should enact a "decline the fast break foul" rule. It would apply to situations like the following, which I see occur fairly often--probably once every few games or so:

If you turn up the volume you can hear the whistle blow just after Isaiah Thomas tipped the ball through the rim, so clearly it had no effect on the play. The basket obviously didn't count though, because the foul was called on Jae Crowder's layup attempt. Crowder then went to the free-throw line and missed one of his two shots.

Why shouldn't the Celtics be able to just decline the foul and take Isaiah's hoop instead?